Borderlands 4 Review

Borderlands 4 fixes the things the series most needed to fix. The shooting is the best it has ever been, the new movement, with a grapple, a dodge and gliding, finally makes a Borderlands world feel good to cross, and the shift to one seamless open planet drops the loading screens that used to chop the old games into pieces. As a machine for finding a better gun and trying it on a crowd of enemies, it is deeply satisfying and easy to lose an evening to.

The writing is where opinion splits. Gearbox pulled hard away from the exhausting quip every second of the last game, which many players wanted, but the result can swing past dry into flat, and the villain does not land the way Handsome Jack did. Worse at launch was performance on PC, where stutter and heavy hardware demands soured the first week for a lot of buyers before patches arrived.

If you come for the loop, the gunplay and traversal, this is the strongest that core has been. If you came for the humor or you play on a modest PC, weigh those against the price. The foundation is excellent, the finish is uneven, and a season of patches and content will decide how it is remembered.